The World’s Biggest Electric

Vehicle Company Looks

Nothing Like Tesla
• China’s and the world’s largest maker of electric vehicles (EVs), battery-maker
BYD, is pursuing the potential global mass market for EVs with cars aimed at
middle-class drivers.

• BYD wants to be a major global auto brand, but its fallback plan is to be a major
supplier of batteries to the electric vehicle market.

• BYD is the No. 1 producer of plug-in vehicles globally.

• BYD introduced its first electric car in 2008, the same year Tesla’s Roadster
debuted, but the small underpowered car was a market failure.
• The main reason why BYD topped 1st in the EV market is that BYD is
focusing on the performance of its batteries while Tesla is more about branding
and design.
 
• BYD opened one of the world’s largest battery plants, a 10 million-square-foot
facility in Qinghai province, and in February it broke ground on another of
similar size.

• BYD Co. is in turn the No. 1 producer of plug-in vehicles globally, attracting
a tiny fraction of the attention of Elon Musk’s company while powering, to a
significant extent, a transition to electrified mobility that’s moving faster in
China than in any other country.
• BYD now has about a quarter-million employees and sells as many as
30,000 pure EVs or plug-in hybrids in China every month, most of them
anything but status symbols. Its cheapest model, the e1, starts at 60,000
yuan ($8,950) after subsidies.

• All of 20,000 taxis are electric BYDs, compared with fewer than 20 of any
make in New York. More than 500,000 electric buses ply Chinese roads,
compared with fewer than 1,000 in the U.S.
 

 
• BYD’s totalizing philosophy becomes evident as you approach
the company’s headquarters in the eastern suburbs of
Shenzhen.
• The last leg of the trip runs down BYD Road, a six-lane
corridor divided by rows of solar-powered BYD light
standards.
• About 40,000 people work on the campus, traveling to its
factories and office blocks on BYD buses.
• The internal roads are almost spotless, patrolled at frequent
intervals by BYD street sweepers.
• In automotive circles, Wang’s predictions of the combustion
engine’s imminent demise often meet profound skepticism.
Chinese sales of new-energy vehicles, a category comprising
plug-in hybrids, pure EVs, and fuel-cell cars, more than tripled
from 2015 to 2018, but they still account for only 4.5 percent
of the total. The doubters, he argues, underestimate the
country’s capacity for reinvention.
• China has more reason than most countries to wean itself
from oil. Relative to the size of its economy, its domestic
reserves are modest, and much of the crude it imports
travels by tanker from the Persian Gulf through waters
dominated by the navies of the U.S. and its allies.
• And dozens of Chinese manufacturers are now vying
for customers, from heavyweights BAIC Motor Corp.
and SAIC Motor Corp. to buzzy startup NIO, a maker
of electric SUVs that raised $1 billion when it went
public in New York last year. American and European
automakers, too, are scrambling to increase EV sales in
China.
• Working in China has involved some adjustment. For
one thing, color preferences are markedly different.
Blue and gray barely sell, and black is associated with
government officials. Whites and earth tones are
winners.
• And dashboard displays in higher-end cars need to
make room for air-pollution sensor readouts.
Thank you